Confusing the Climate Deniers…

Our modern media is fixed on the idea of “balanced” reporting rather than factual reporting. You find it across all topics and issues and with many of these topics a “balanced” view is okay because the nature of the issue is generally opinion anyway. On the topic of climate change, however, it isn’t a matter of opinion, but rather, it is factual. It should, therefore, be reported as fact with no need to fabricate a “balanced” scenario. The following is an excerpt from consortiumnews.com written by Dan Becker and James Gerstenzang that details how climate deniers are led by means of confusion on the topic of climate change…

With the new attention that the I.P.C.C. report brings to the science of global warming, in coming weeks and months more than a few serious news reporters will be tempted in the name of “balance” to quote the deniers — journalists call them “skeptics” – who have presented increasingly discredited messages: Global warming is not happening. Or if it is, it is not caused by carbon dioxide emissions or other human activity. Or, well, it won’t have an impact — we’ll be fine.

–Fred Singer, Science and Environmental Policy Project: “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.” Oh, yeah? Acting under U.S. Supreme Court direction, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that CO2 is a pollutant because of the harm it causes.

For those who write about global warming, spreading the pronouncements of fringe “skeptics” doesn’t show balance. For those who read about global warming, it equates serious climate science and evaluation of peer-reviewed reports with the declarations of individuals, most lacking background in climate research, who are often funded by those standing to profit if the United States fails to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Exxon, for example, gave $2.8 million to the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute alone from 1998 to 2012, according to corporate tax records cited in a Greenpeace report.

It does appear that responsible media outlets are beginning to give much more coverage to the science-supported aspects of climate change – which, indeed, is really frustrating to those who want to believe things that are’t supported by fact. We compare this “debates” about imaginary creatures such as bigfoot or a living Carcharodon megalodon. That there’s not a shred of evidence to suggest that these creatures exist does not sway certain unscientific minds. The “Well I still think…” crowd.

For the sake of ” nuetrality, and balanced reporting, the media wants to have a ” zero” balance on the weighing scale, even if the the stuff on the other end is just crap. CNN is the most guilty, MSNBC does that too.

the final sentences sum it up nicely: “Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying “there’s no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”